Kyle Kellams: Here is the voice of another U of A grad. Cause you have to do it for me. Sarah Mesko will perform Feb. 14 at Herring Crest in Elm Springs. It’s part of a special Chamber Music of the Ozarks concert.
She’s performed at the Met with the Cleveland Orchestra, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. She says her interest in the arts can be traced back to growing up in Hot Springs.
Sarah Mesko: We had the Hot Springs Music Festival when I was growing up, and that was really my in to the serious classical music world.
Kellams: Well, that’s so cool, then, that you’re coming up here to perform, because this is sort of an extension of that.
Mesko: Exactly. I was so thrilled when I heard that Tomoko and the Ozark Music Initiative was going to revive the Hot Springs Music Festival, because it meant so much to me.
Kellams: How did that help you discover that this is something that you would want to pursue for a livelihood?
Mesko: The founders of that festival were friends of friends, and so they were very generous with me with their time. And so when I was a teenager, I was a flutist, and I also liked to sing. And so I had no idea what to do for college, but I knew I wanted to do music as a career.
So I got to sit in their living room on several afternoons, play flute for them, sing with them, pick their brains. Where should I audition? How should I audition? And they were so wonderfully generous with their advice, with their wisdom.
And it turned out that the summer after I graduated high school, it was 2003, and they were doing their first opera, and they needed a third lady in The Magic Flute in English. And they said, well, Sarah, we know you. You live here. We know you can sing. Do you want to do Third Lady in English? And I had never even seen an opera, but I really wanted to try it out, so I did.
Kellams: Did you then think, OK, I’ve got the bug and I want to become a professional, critically praised opera singer?
Mesko: That’s exactly where it started. And about halfway through my freshman year at the University of Arkansas, I was double majoring in flute performance and vocal performance, and I ended up getting both degrees. But I knew I would need to specialize in one because I kind of have a go-big-or-go-home mentality.
So I wanted something I could really pour myself into. And yeah, it was about halfway through that first semester I thought, OK, I’m going to be a singer. I want to do opera. This is the most fun I’ve ever had.
Kellams: There are limited numbers of opera positions across the country and around the world, so I imagine it’s competitive. What takes place between that freshman year at the University of Arkansas and now?
Mesko: Yes, it is very competitive out there. So my path was a typical path for the time when I was coming up. After the U of A, I went to grad school at Rice University, where I studied with Stephen King, who’s my teacher now in Houston. So I got my master’s degree in vocal performance.
And between roughly 2003 and 2013, I did, I think it was, 11 summer programs in 11 years. So that was a big part of my path, was all of those summer programs, singing for people, getting in front of people who could help me.
And then I did my apprenticeship in D.C. with Washington National Opera, my two-year apprenticeship after my master’s degree.
Kellams: What’s that like?
Mesko: That was incredible. I learned about opera, but I didn’t really know how to be a part of an opera company until I did my two-year apprenticeship with Washington National.
I learned who you ask for what. If my shoes don’t fit, who do I tell? No, don’t tell the director. Tell the stage manager. And the stage manager will tell the costume department. That’s where I learned all of that. How a company exists.
Kellams: What will we hear you perform when you’re here in Northwest Arkansas?
Mesko: It’s going to be a great program. It’ll be a mix of classical art songs. We have a couple of opera arias.
And Jenny Kuenzer, the flute professor from Auburn, is joining Tomoko and me. And so we will do a lot of repertoire as a trio, as a flute, mezzo, piano trio, which is such an incredible sound.
We’re doing a couple of André Previn pieces, so we have some modern flair. We have some things in English. We have a couple of really fun kind of Valentine’s-themed songs from Rodgers and Hart. So we’ll kind of have a little bit of a cabaret feel there at the end.
And we’ll sing some Carmen. We have a new arrangement of a couple of tunes from Carmen that we’re working as a trio to arrange for the very first time for this particular ensemble.
Kellams: What sort of confidence-building was studying the arts, both at Lakeside High School in Hot Springs and the University of Arkansas and then beyond? Did it help with confidence?
Mesko: Absolutely it did. And I’m so glad that I chose to go to the University of Arkansas, not only for the Bodenheimer Fellowship, which I was very fortunate to receive.
So financially, it made all the sense in the world for me to stay in state and get a great education at the U of A. But also I had so many more performance opportunities just being from a smaller state.
Mathematically, there are just fewer people available who want to study what I want to study. And so if I had gone to a place like IU, where there are 500 vocal students, a lot of people who are very talented never get to perform even once. And I got to perform all the time.
And it was just the most fantastic experience, both here at the U of A and at Rice, because Rice is also a very small program.
Kellams: Continued great success. Safe travels north, and we’ll see you soon.
Mesko: Thanks so much, Kyle. I appreciate it.
Sarah Mesko will perform at 4 p.m. Feb. 14 at Herring Crest in Elm Springs as part of a special Chamber Music of the Ozarks concert. You can find out much more information about the concert at Ozarks. We spoke yesterday via Zoom.
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